Your Sunday Sermon Notes

Was there a good point made in the sermon you heard during your Mass of Sunday Obligation?

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I didn’t preach today, since I was the deacon for the Mass and I didn’t have another scheduled Mass. Had I preached today, I think I would have spoken about the dignity of work, especially the menial tasks we perform. I would have tied together the parable of the man who hires workers at different times of the day and also the Epistle in which Paul uses sports imagery. It takes menial, repetitious, boring work to become proficient in a sport, so that you can finish the race or match and win the prize. Some come by their prizes more easily than others, but we can all get to the finish line. God does not offer challenges that we can’t attain. It takes work. We can make progress toward the finish line even in our boring, menial tasks. By offering brief prayers while working and by offering the work itself as a sacrifice, we ready ourselves for the trial which we face in our desire for heaven.

17 Responses to Your Sunday Sermon Notes

I wish I could recall where I read that we should “never look down upon those who keep in repair the fabric of the world”.

The quotation is not in the book about work by Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, published in English as “All You Who Labor” and later as “Working Your Way into Heaven: How to Make Work, Stress, and Drudgery a Means to Your Sanctity”.

Fr. Vincent noted that many people view the Old Testament as very harsh, but in fact it was only Our Lord who revealed the reality of eternal punishment for sin and moreover he made the commandments more stringent. However, unlike the scholars of the law who lay heavy burdens on people, but do not lift a finger to help them, Our Lord does help us by his grace to keep the commandments. That is where His mercy is. So while there is today a school of thought that God is so merciful that he does not really expect us to keep the commandments, His mercy really consists in His helping us to keep them. And we are all sinners. We all need this help. He is our savior in our day to day struggle with sin.

He noted that yesterday, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes is one of his favorite feasts and many of us would like to go to Lourdes, but it is so far away. At Lourdes there is a healing spring, but here at the altar is opened up for us a healing spring of grace that flows from the pierced heart of Jesus Christ, a spring of grace that wells up within us because of our reception of the Eucharist.

The Reverend Deacon essentially repeated the message of Sirach. God gives us a choice between good and evil, we need to choose wisely. To build upon this, he added “Following the Commandments is a matter of choice. What never changes, however, is the binding power of the Law. It still applies to us even if we choose to ignore it.”

Dominica VI Per Annum (Ann. A.): Jesus did not abolish the laws: the moral laws or the laws of worship. We can’t be white-washed sepulchers, but that doesn’t mean that externals don’t matter, especially the externals of Liturgy. Jesus want’s the whole package: we can neither be Gnostics nor Pharisees. It is not just enough to simply believe intellectually or in our hearts: we need to manifest that belief in the way we act, particularly around the Blessed Sacrament and during Liturgical worship. Reverence, proper manner of reception of holy communion (referring to our altar rail), ceremonial and decorum, all of this matters and speaks volumes, as they convey the message of the Truth of Who the Blessed Sacrament is more than words alone ever could.

Jesus’s words in the Gospel reading (Matt 5:17-37) denotes that we are meant to follow God’s law out of love and not necessarily out of fear. Treating the commandments like traffic violations misses the point in that it is about relationship…about where our hearts are. That is why Jesus said that those who look lustfully at a woman have already committed adultery in their hearts.

Father also mentioned that most people don’t know why they are unhappy but it is because they don’t keep the commandments. Conversely, those who follow the commandments are some of the happiest people. Of course, we need Divine love/grace and we access that through the sacraments and prayer.

As an aside, when in the Gospel reading, Jesus said this:
“It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce. But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife – unless the marriage is unlawful – causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
~and this~
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The logic of the Gospel seems not to permit adulterers at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

I presented a plan, two years in the making, for the parish to grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ. We will focus on five priorities: devout worship, more disciples, being more welcoming, seeking out those who are inactive or not Catholic or Christian, and of course, paying for all we do.

At the NO, Bishop Nickless of Sioux City, IA, preached clearly on the permanence of marriage and on WHY a divorced person lacking a decree of nullity who then has a civil marriage cannot receive Holy Communion. Full stop. This was an elaboration, with his typical gentle clarity, on his letter in the diocesan paper published on Thursday. In the process of his explanation, he also taught clearly that contraception is a sin.

At the EF, our beloved pastor was not feeling well at all today, and he decided not to preach a homily. He presented us with two facts. First, that we had entered the season of Septuagesima. Second, that our ability to have an EF Mass at our parish tenuously hinges on one man alone, asking prayers that our bishop will send another priest to our parish that has a love for the EF Mass. He then had us sit in silence for several minutes to dwell on that fact. A very sobering moment, indeed.

@Charles E Flynn: I quite enjoy your quote: “never look down upon those who keep in repair the fabric of the world”. It is good to say hello again! The last time that we crossed paths was on the NLM website. God be with you!

Regarding the post, we did not hear a sermon today, from one of our two good priests. We had, instead, a CD promoting an important diocesan campaign.

In Septuagesima we go from the incarnation to what seems to be a more gloomy period, a time of penance. The incarnation hearkens back to the creation, the “in the beginning” of Genesis is repeated in John 1:1 where the Word is made flesh. However the first man Adam fell. Our restoration is a new creation where Jesus empties himself, that is becomes nothing, in order to become the new Adam. Through his sacrifice we go from death to life. We have to follow Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, and bring our bodies and our entire being into subjection to Him. Lent is a time for us to prepare to do just that.

Starting with a brief story of the lives of Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin, that the permanence of marriage is God’s law as Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, and that if we keep God truly in our marriages it is quite possible.

St. Linus in Oak Lawn, IL, Archdiocese of Chicago:
Father opened by telling us of the young man who had just gotten his driver license and asked his dad about using the family car. Dad said, “If keep your grades up, do your chores, read the bible and get your hair cut, I will let you use the car.” The son worked hard at school, at home and read the bible, but did not get his hair cut. When he asked for the car, his Dad said no. The son said, “In reading the bible I noted that Abraham has long hair, Moses had long hair and even Our Lord, Jesus has long hair. ” His Dad responded, “Did you also note that wherever they went, they walked?” Father noted that if will listen and do what the Father asks, we will be rewarded.

We went to a Parish in a different town and were so thankful to find Father celebrating the Ordinary form Ad Orientem! He used the complete reading and gave a fantastic homily about Jesus completing the law and raising the requirements on behavior that is pleasing to God. He also mentioned that God supplies the graces necessary to enable us to live as Jesus taught.

Septuagesima was the occasion for a sermon on the First Commandment. The values of the so called Enlightenment, which has brought darkness not light, giving birth to the outrages and sacrileges of the French Revolution.

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"We as Catholics have not properly combated (the culture) because we have not been taught our Catholic Faith, especially in the depth needed to address these grave evils of our time. This is a failure of catechesis both of children and young people that has been going on for fifty years. It is being addressed, but it needs much more radical attention... What has also contributed greatly to the situation is an exaltation of the virtue of tolerance which is falsely seen as the virtue which governs all other virtues. In other words, we should tolerate other people in their immoral actions to the extent that we seem also to accept the moral wrong. Tolerance is a virtue, but it is certainly not the principal virtue; the principal virtue is charity... Charity means speaking the truth. I have encountered it (not speaking the truth) many times myself as a priest and bishop. It is something we simply need to address. There is far too much silence — people do not want to talk about it because the topic is not 'politically correct.' But we cannot be silent any longer."

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"Where priest and people together face the same way, what we have is a cosmic orientation and also in interpretation of the Eucharist in terms of resurrection and trinitarian theology. Hence it is also an interpretation in terms of parousia, a theology of hope, in which every Mass is an approach to the return of Christ."

"In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. ... If all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians." CDF 2003

One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting.
— C. S. Lewis

Some words of wisdom…

The more vigorously the primacy was displayed, the more the question came up about the extent and and limits of [papal] authority, which of course, as such, had never been considered. After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything in liturgical matters, especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council. Eventually, the idea of the givenness of the liturgy, the fact that one cannot do with it what one will, faded from the public consciousness of the West. In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith. … The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition.

"The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine—but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight."

For contemplation…

"Latin is a precise, essential language. It will be abandoned, not because it is unsuitable for the new requirements of progress, but because the new men will not be suitable for it. When the age of demagogues and charlatans begins, a language like Latin will no longer be useful, and any oaf will be able to give a speech in public and talk in such a way that he will not be kicked off the stage. The secret to this will consist in the fact that, by making use of words that are general, elusive, and sound good, he will be able to speak for an hour without saying anything. With Latin, this is impossible."

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“The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being.”

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"If your work is strong enough for someone to hate you, it's strong enough for someone to love you. The middle is what you should fear."

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For your consideration…

"One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting."

- C.S. Lewis

More food for thought:

“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Francis Card. George

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“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

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